Involved & Engaged: The Last Mile of Business Performance

By Ulf Schneider

October 2, 2015

We all know, both intuitively and from extensive research, that employees who are highly engaged are more productive. For more than a decade, Glassdoor, Towers Watson, Catalyst, and others have helped management teams better understand how to measure the impact of employee engagement on business performance.

But knowing how to measure employee engagement certainly doesn’t mean we know how to increase it.

While many of us in human resources and leadership have come to recognize the benefits of leadership development programs to improve engagement of superstar employees through skill training, I believe there’s more to developing the maximum potential of all of our workforce. The real breakthroughs to increase employee engagement to the highest levels will come from helping all employees find the motivation to go the extra mile and work at their highest potential, as often as possible.

Creating the conditions to get an employee to go the extra mile includes more than classroom skills training and can require more than just flexible work hours.

Reports on Millennials, who now constitute the biggest part of the workforce, may show us the way. In her Internet Trends 2015 Report, Internet and new technologies expert, Mary Meeker, reported that Millennials not only want flexible work options and professional development, but opportunities for meaningful work.

That is to say, it is not just in the accomplishing of a goal, but in the creation of something important and lasting for a greater good.

But is it only Millennials that are interested in meaningful work? I don’t think so.

So, how do managers assure that work is meaningful?

For those of us who work in the life sciences industry it should be easy. Whether you are a doctor or nurse caring for patients, a hospital administrator, a clinical researcher working to bring a new medicine to market, or in the administrative or support functions at a biopharmaceutical, clinical research organization, or hospital company, our business strategy and shared greater good is to prevent and cure disease to improve the lives of patients in the most cost effective manner.

At PAREXEL, we have teamed with academia in several countries to train the next generation of clinical researchers. We have adopted a flexible work environment. Yet we know that these initiatives on their own are not enough to motivate associates to go the extra mile and achieve the highest levels of engagement with their peers and their work that will drive our business performance.

Our answer is to encourage a culture of collaboration, especially in small teams, wherever the opportunities may arise. Creating such a culture acknowledges that we all have many roles to play in our organizations. At any given moment we may be students, mentors, teachers or consultants, learning from and with each other. This collaboration and respect for everyone’s knowledge – no matter their background or position in the company – creates a sense that we are all involved in a purpose for the greater good. Individuals more readily believe the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.

To be sure, the reward systems to achieve this collaboration require team goals, group and individual feedback, as well as appraisals up and down, and importantly buy-in as a business strategy. My efforts are now increasingly directed to thinking about the feedback and reward systems to make this culture of collaboration more pervasive and sustainable.

How often do you consider involving more than just superstar employees in small teams to collaborate on work that is integral to your business strategy?